Next to the Dubai International Film Festival in December, the Dubai Tennis Championship—going on right now—is my favorite time of year here. I started going to it like four years ago. Bunches of us would jump in a car and make our way from Bur Dubai or Al Barsha to the tennis stadium and watch world class tennis players for less money it would cost us to go to the movies. Cooler still, we could get take-away from Dubai’s best sushi place, Sushi Sushi, that happens to be right outside the stadium and eat it as we watched Serena or Venus or Andre play. We would exchange (what we thought was) witty banter between points and then, after the silence during play, we would cheer loudly for a point well played. It was awesome.

Slowly, over these past years, the prices have risen, tickets have needed to be purchased before the day of the match, and the traffic to get to the tennis stadium has gotten increasingly bad. For tennis, though, we die hards would persevere. A few extra dirhams here, a few more minutes in the car there. No problem.

Until this year.

You see, even though I’m a member of the official fan club affiliated with the tennis tournament, I never got any warning that tickets were on sale and somehow all the seats to all the matches were sold out a month beforehand, long before tennis tickets were on my radar.

Why do I mention this sad story?

Because right now I’m in our apartment watching Justine Henin playing live on Dubai Sports Channel and there are empty seats. Plenty of empty seats, seats calling out to me, “Liiii-iiiz…why aren’t you here?” Or maybe they’re saying it in Arabic. Either way, I get their point and I’m annoyed. I mean, how did this happen? How did that many people find out about the tickets going on sale that much sooner than I did and then, after finding out and buying the tickets, how could so many people have blown it off, leaving empty seat after empty seat? And now Henin and Srebotnik are going into a third set! This is a sweet match that I should be sharing with friends. We should be passing sushi up and down the row and making (what we think) are witty comments. But instead I’m on my couch. Watching it on TV. Looking at empty seats.

I’m not at all impressed with this turn of events. I am, however, pretty darn psyched that Henin just won. Go Justine!